On Friday, I took possession of what Ricardo Montalban would have called, "My new car." It's a wonderfully roomy 1996 Ford Taurus GL Station Wagon. Now it will make it much easier to get my musical equipment to the next gig - with the rear hatch, everything just fits right in the back. I have other plans for this automobile, but more on that later. For now, it will just take over the shuttling duties from my other car.
This isn't the first station wagon I've owned. In fact, it's the third. My first one was purchased in 1980 and it was a huge land-yacht of a machine, a 1971 Dodge Polara behemoth that must have been forty feet long. At least it seemed like it. And to the other extreme, my second station wagon, acquired in 1999, was a tiny, almost too small for me 1984 Ford Escort. The back seat did lay down, however, and I was able to stuff my musical equipment into the back of it somehow.
But, the main reason I got this present station wagon is because there's a car club near my town that I've been wanting to join for a few years, but never had a car. Well, I finally got the car of my dreams, a swoopy, rounded cutie that has a lot of potential for turning it into a great street cruiser. The first thing I'll do to it is to lower it closer to the ground. Right now, it sits much too high in the sky for my liking. Then, after it's way down on the ground, wider tires and custom wheels of some kind. I'm thinking brushed aluminum S/T's. My ultimate goal is to rip out the V-6 it currently has, which is wedged in sideways making it a front-wheel drive and replacing it with something a lot more peppier. Perhaps a 351 and converting it to rear-wheel drive. I always wondered why that if they designed this car as a front-wheel drive, why it had the hump through the middle of cockpit, even though there wasn't a driveshaft under there. Well, I guess they put it there for people like me who would want to go the trouble to convert it back to "normal."
One final thing I'd like to do to it someday, but this would be a lot of work, and that is to convert it into a two-door station wagon instead of four. Kind of like the old Chevy Nomads of the mid-50's. As I make progress on my customization process, I'll keep everything posted for all those enquiring minds out there. Here is the car as it looked when I first brought it home on Friday:
